The Clock Struck Four
by seasprays
Summary: Three voices Brutus hears when the Jabberjays attack, and one that he never can.


**Author's note: : For Lils, for the Gift Giving Extravaganza 2014. Using the prompt 'blue' (for the last section) from the Colour Challenge at the Caesar's Palace forum. Warning: Stillbirth. **

**01.**

The voice is for you. It shivers through the air like a spear flung by bunching muscles, honed for six days a week. Like a physical force, it slams into your chest and rocks you back on your heels (and your very axis.) Sand flies as you stumble back, flailing to reach for something-anything at all-but all you have within reach is your past. Nearly thirty years you've been building a shield of unopened letters and messages left to flash red on the answering machine. Scale by scale, you covered your familiar flesh with casual indifference (cruelty, even-and that's what Lya screamed at you while you ushered a new victor off the train and onto the platform) but now it all shatters into a thousand, thousand cutting shards. They slice, sever, impale you until your tendons snap and your arteries pump blood onto the sand and it's impossible to breathe. At least, it feels like that as a red haze descends over your eyes. Like the walls of Jericho tumbled at Joshua's brave trumpets, your shield shatters as the children scream.

"I'm coming!" The words are torn from your throat the same way you wrench your sword from its sheath with the screech of metal and leather. Held before you, the blade bears the evidence of your last fight; golden hairs cling to the congealed blood of the mutts you slew. Soon, you're going to find a new sheath for it: in the breast of the doomed soul who made your little brother and sister scream like their very skin is peeling from their bones.

"Brutus," Enobaria shouts-the seldom listened to voice of reason-"Brutus, think!"

But how can you think? How can you form a rational thought in your mind when your sister, your brother, scream you name and the sound hangs in the air so you can almost see the painful letters etched in blood? The cries cut like a knife, paring back the moments of your life that you thought _defined_ you (standing on the Reaping stage with your fist held high towards the remote and cold sun; blood running down your wrists, your elbows, like a new pair of gloves; breathing in District 2's cold, piercing air for the first time as a victor), until now. Well, you were wrong. That's nothing, _nothing_, like the single bright image that you seem now. It's sunset (isn't it always?), and before your eyes, Mother Nature puts on her most glorious show. The rounded peaks of the Granite Hills are black and mysterious against the panorama of bloody reds and fiery oranges. Soon though, rosy pinks and dark, dreamy purples will take the stage, and that's what you've come to see. Your legs dangle out over empty space and the quarry below is inky dark but your arms are anchored around your brother and sister's shoulders and they're warm and real, leaning into you (Lya's still a bit scared of the dark, or maybe what's hidden there, but you're her big brother and it's okay.)

Pounding uphill, through the wall of green, you slash at the vines that _dare_ to grow across you path. Tough fibres jar your wrist, sending the impact rushing up your arm but nothing can stop you when those pained screams-fingernails being pulled from flesh-fill your consciousness. For you, they've never aged. Threatening to trip you, the spry green vines tangle around your legs and try to encircle your neck; a living noose. They're out of place when a red film taints all you can see. For a moment, your searing breaths penetrate your consciousness and your lungs are like fire and metal scraped rough over stone. Maybe you should have let one of the younger victors volunteer. They would have if you'd asked them to, and that makes it all worse, doesn't it? But how could you? You remember them; eager young men you trained. You know there's no way you'd see Lance on the Reaping stage again when you were there the first time he made it, hand over hand, to the top of the tallest rope and was too scared to climb back down. Nor could you ask Fallon to be ready to sprint off the plate (into hell, or worse this time?) when you heard him crying for hours the first night he came to the career academy.

"Brutus, please!"

Like a cold shot of adrenaline, the cry spurs you on. Reverberating in your skull, the words play out a sick rhythm as your feet slap the leaf litter below. Now there's no careful pacing, no regulated breathing like you taught the young careers; it's a headlong dash into hell and that's your sister, screaming like she's eight years old again. The last time you heard her like that was when her desperate pleas tumbled among the marble columns of the Justice Building as she begged you to come back home safe. Bony arms thin but strong around your waist, she buried her head in your shirt and wouldn't let go. You pried her off you before a peacekeeper could see and call you weak. Really, you've been doing that for nearly thirty years. Your mentors told you it was for the best, but it hasn't worked now, has it?

**02.**

The two young voices cut off on a ragged note-a blade dragged across soft flesh. You know what it feels like, at least, to have the knife in your hand and there's nothing like the power flowing through your veins, the way your blood sings, as someone else's leaks out onto the ground. The uphill chase has robbed you of breath to call out for them, and behind you, Enobaria's shouts and those of your allies have grown faint.

"Fuck, Brutus. Help!"

The new voice is older, harsh and rough and choking with pain, like nails tearing his throat. You've heard it every day since you were ten years old. In the rocky yard at the _District School _in Averton, tucked among the Granite Hills, you got into your third fight (and won.) The principle recommended you join the career program in Marble without even consulting your mother. All she had to do was sign a custody form (just like that, you were district property.) Gabbro, a victor and a trainer, met you at the end of the long driveway, arms folded across his barrel chest. Before you could even say hello, he took a swipe at you. Ten years old, you were knocked sprawling to the ground and the rocks were cruel on your young bones. Gabbro offered his hand and told you that next time you'd duck. He'd make sure of it.

You weren't friends until you stumbled off the ladder into the hovercraft (bleeding, battered, but a victor) as the electric current released your frozen muscles. Gabbro caught you before you fell, and he kept right on doing that, filling with gruff affection, the void left by your father. After you won, fellow victors were the only ones it was really safe to get close to; the same blood threat hung over their heads as yours.

**03.**

When you're gasping for air, as if there's no oxygen to be had, the trees open out into a clearing; just the right shape for a cell, with leaves to make a floor and dark trunks the bars. Gasping for air, you burst through the trunks and stumble to a halt. Emptiness confronts you. No blades, no torturer's rack. For a moment, silence falls. The air shivers with expectation or maybe that's just the humidity. It's thick-you could cut it with a keen edge-and refuses to enter your lungs. Somewhere above your head, a bird flies from branch to branch but you're bent double, waging a primal battle to suck air into your lungs so you can fight, held, just stand up straight. On some level, deep in the recesses of your mind, you know what's coming next. But your rational thoughts have been pushed back by a flood of adrenaline, buried deep, deep, like the roads under the January snows.

She screams, a sound she's never made before (even when you rucked her skirt up to her waist with your eager hands) and it's that that snaps you back to reality. In a way, Lyme's always been looking out for you. You know she'd never scream, never beg (she was always the one who teased you when you were snuggled in one sleeping bag, breath frosty in the caves that made a honeycomb of the cliffs behind the Victor's Village), even if her bones were cracking on the rack. You've seen her in a bed of blood as muscles tore and her skin split at the seams but she never begged for her labour to end or for the drugs to dull her to insensibility. That's when you notice the flutter of black and white wings against the trees.

**04.**

Like the memories and lost chances their cries have stirred in your mind, the jabberyjays follow you. Their voices are a cacophony that drills into your skull, but the recollections that surface are so much worse; they hound you mercilessly. At least the birds take flight at a swiftly flung stone. But they return all too soon, at least two dozen of them, for one bird can only recall two or three voices. You recognise the agonised screams of your family, your friends, and even some of the boys and girls your trained and sent to the arena, to return in one way or another (once, there wasn't even enough left of a boy to put in a coffin.) Soon, their weight is too great, like the great slabs of marble hoisted from the quarries, and it crushes you to the ground. With legs splayed out and back against a tree, defeat hangs over your shoulders like a dark mantle and you drop your head into your hands. It's been a long time since you cried. Your sole consolation is that there's one voice that the Capitol can _never_ throw at you.

Your newborn daughter never cried. She never even opened her eyes, because she was born with pale blue skin that was so fragile, it tore under the doctor's fingers as he pulled her from the once-safety of Lyme's body. She didn't-couldn't-even draw breath, because at 25 weeks growth, her lungs were not ready to face the harsh air of the world outside her mother's womb. You never held her. Instead, you crushed Lyme against you (blood and all) and ignored the way her nails raked your skin as she tried to reach for the stillborn that one of the nurses whisked away; a dream too fragile, too precious, to stand the morning sun's rays. Lyme screamed and fought you like you were one of the ice-eyed mutts that stalked her arena. In the end, though, you overpowered her, and her frantic strength drained when she saw a nurse drop a cloth over the baby's face and took her away.

There's one voice that never comes from the treacherous throats of the jabberjays, but as tears leak through your fingers, you wish it could.


End file.
